Because Friday's event was a news conference, and all Jim cares about is winning the football game Sunday against his brother.

On Friday, Jim and John sat together on the mammoth stage at the NFL media center, the first time in Super Bowl history that competing head coaches have held a joint news conference. Can anyone imagine Bill Belichick and Tom Coughlin sitting side by side?

Yes, it was staged. It was contrived. But it was a nod to the incredibly unique element of this Super Bowl. And Jim, though he didn't seem excited about being there, was willing to participate.

The brothers came out, and their differences were obvious immediately. John was wearing a tailored dark suit and tie. Jim was wearing his 49ers hat, black fleece and khaki pants. He travels with a suitcase full of those identical clothes, a notion he may have picked up from sweat-suit-clad Al Davis when he worked as an assistant for the Raiders.

Once the brothers opened their mouths the differences continued. John acted as master of ceremonies of the event, amiable and personable, opening things with a long statement, introducing their parents and 97-year old grandfather, Joe Cipiti, who was wearing a half Ravens, half 49ers hat. And then John turned the microphone over to his brother.

"I concur," Jim said flatly. Though he broke up the room, he wasn't trying to be funny. He was just being himself.

"You have to be yourself," their father, Jack, said. "I worked for a lot of great coaches, and I tried to emulate them. But I learned you have to be who you are. I see John and Jim doing that. They are who they are. That's the beauty of it."

ESPN did a tale-of-the-tape breakdown of the news conference. John spoke for about 11 1/2 minutes compared with Jim's seven minutes. John smiled more than twice as much, a 7-3 ratio. John seemed relaxed. Jim looked as if he was grinding his molars together, and after the session and photos were over, he practically sprinted off the stage.

John was the one telling the cute anecdotes about building a hockey goal out of chicken wire and breaking all the windows in the garage. He spoke of living and dying with every snap Jim took as a quarterback in the NFL. He thanked Jim for allowing the Ravens to share the Saints' practice facility, saving them from the hard baseball field at Tulane they'd been assigned to. (What was the NFL thinking?) John lavished praise on his brother. In the front row, the parents beamed and occasionally dabbed their eyes.

"That was one of those magic moments," Jack said.

Though Jim seems far less interested in the heartwarming element, this is magical: turning one of the world's biggest sporting events into a Harbaugh family reunion. One of the special parts is that Jim's 23-year-old son, Jay, is an assistant on John's staff. Jay, the oldest of Jim's six children from two marriages, was a student assistant at Oregon State under Mike Riley and works breaking down video for Baltimore. Father and son haven't talked this week.

"I've sent him a few texts just letting him know how I feel about him," Jim said. "I don't want to give people a reason to think I'm talking to him."

The Ravens have kept Jay mostly off limits, but he did grant an interview to the Los Angeles Times, and his words would have made his father proud. He wants to beat his dad's team Sunday.

"I couldn't fathom even considering not being all-in with the team that I'm a part of," Jay Harbaugh said. "Otherwise there's no point being a part of it, putting in all the time that you do and making the sacrifices. In some alternate universe, if I was conflicted, it would just confuse my dad. It would confuse any true competitor. If you're all-in, you're all-in. There's no wavering."

If there's one thing the Harbaughs understand, it's being a true competitor. Not just Jim or John or Jay or Jack. Mom Jackie understands it too.

"There's no one in the family who has more competitive fire than my mother," Jim said. "She competes like a maniac."

Jim is more like his mother. While Jack gravitates toward the media, filling notebooks and microphones with anecdotes, Jackie is more wary, like her middle child, Jim. When asked a few questions, she scolded the media for trying to put people in one little box.

It's easy to turn the story into one of young men following their father into the coaching business. But as the glue for a coaching family that made 17 moves, Jackie was the one who imparted many lessons to her children. She encouraged them to rely on each other - through all those moves, family members were the constants in each other's lives.

"She basically made it very clear that we were to have each other's back," John said. "No matter what."